County leaders have a specific request tied to Intermountain's new Salt Lake City hospital

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Salt Lake County leaders want Intermountain Health to expand behavioral health services within planned new hospital.
The new hospital's planning should reflect behavioral health needs, county officials emphasize.
Salt Lake City has yet to engage with healthcare provider on the request.

SALT LAKE CITY — Intermountain Health recently filed new documents shedding light on its plans for a new hospital near downtown Salt Lake City, but the majority of county leaders hope the new facility includes greater behavioral health resources.

Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson and seven members of the County Council sent a letter to the Salt Lake City Council on Tuesday, urging the city to "encourage" Intermountain Health to include behavioral health inpatient capacity "in the design and programming at its new downtown hospital."

LDS Hospital already, they wrote, is a "critical provider" of inpatient behavioral health services, including psychiatric beds, crisis stabilization and withdrawal management.

They asked the city to ensure that the new LDS Hospital, planned for a space around 754 S. State, at least maintain the same number of inpatient beds, but possibly expand them.

"(T)he new hospital's planning should reflect — and where possible advance — the expanded inpatient behavioral health capacity that our community desperately needs," the group wrote, adding that they are aware that the City Council's role is to review land use matters and that it's up to Intermountain Health to make that decision.

"We are simply requesting that the City Council use its voice and its ongoing engagement with Intermountain Health to advocate for a community health outcome that is of crucial importance to both the city and the county," they continued.

County leaders also wrote that it could fit into its new behavioral health plan, which it crafted in coordination with the Leifman Group. Carlos Moreno and Sheldon Stewart were the only council members who did not sign the letter.

Wilson announced last week that the county is now putting 25 recommendations to improve the county's response to homelessness and criminal justice into motion, with the help of multiple entities, including the state, city and Steve Leifman, a former Miami judge who founded the Leifman Group.

Local and state leaders hope the plan can replicate Florida's successes after Leifman implemented changes that ultimately helped reduce homelessness, jail capacity and recidivism by focusing more on behavioral health resources and training.

"What's really reassuring to me is the commitment across party lines to solutions and the interest of people who get up every day and care about this work," Wilson said last week.

It's probably easier to ask about beds in the new behavioral health beds in the Salt Lake City hospital now because construction has yet to begin, said Salt Lake City Council Chairman Alejandro Puy.

The Salt Lake City Council approved a rezone request that paved the way for the new facility in 2024, with the condition that it includes a development agreement. That agreement mostly centered around certain elements of the project design rather than the services that the facility provides.

It's unclear if the development agreement can or will be changed to require more behavioral bed space. It's a discussion that has yet to take place within the Salt Lake City Council or between the city and the healthcare provider, but Puy said he understands the desire to add more resources.

"We understand that everyone is expecting more from all the partners in this system, and we have a crisis in our streets and there's a need for more beds," he told KSL. "We hope Intermountain will increase the beds. We hope (University of Utah Health) will increase their beds. We hope everybody does more, and we hope that the state will agree to pay for more of the Medicaid needs that we have."

Intermountain Health released new designs of its LDS Hospital "replacement" earlier this month. More details about the project are expected to be released later this year, a spokesperson for the company said at the time.

The City Council discussed another technical zoning measure about the project on Tuesday, signaling that the project is slowly inching closer to having everything in place before construction. City officials believe construction could begin as early as next year.

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